Monday, December 31, 2012

It's snowing! We haven't had much snow around here this winter (this is our second round of snow) so it's pretty exciting!

Here's a picture of my little sisters making a snowman:

We found an old chalkboard easel next to a pre-school's dumpster. After we had painted it, my dad said he had seen it somewhere. What do you know, he had passed by the pre- school earlier, seen the chalkboard and decided to pass it up.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Yesterday, we made chocolate chip cookie mix in a jar for a teacher. It turned out really cute, but we made it at night and the lighting was terrible, so I made another one for our neighbors, that I can show you. I got the recipe on Pinterest, and the idea was a collaboration of wits at our house. We turned the jar into a snowman.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

For Christmas, we made a pallet wood doll bed for my little sisters. they love playing with baby dolls, our kitchen set complete with plastic food and appliances. The only thing they didn't have was a doll bed. We saw a bed at Wal-Mart, but it was cheap, plastic, and hot pink. So, the great doll bed conspiracy was born. Actually, the bed and blankets, pillows, and mattress were made while the girls were standing right there... but they didn't catch on about what it was or what it's for, probably because we are always working on something. Hence, the bed is still a surprise.

I don't have step by step instructions for how to make the bed because that is really up to you. But I can show you what ours turned out like and tell you what we did.

Friday, December 14, 2012

I like finding old frames at garage sales even if they
themselves are ugly, or even if the picture featured inside is blah. If
the structure is good, then you probably have something to work with.
A few months ago, we re-decorated my friend's room around a
Paris/Travel theme. It was a lot of fun and one of the things we did was
take her horrible old dresser and turned it into a beautiful vintage
work of art. It was and ugly light blonde color, and we painted a creamy
off-white, with dark, distressed edges. Then we mod podged old music
sheets on top. Back to the frame we needed to re-do. We did another
frame with music sheets and wanted to have something relatively
matching.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

We have some old medical books and encyclopedias from an auction and nothing to do with them. They looked ugly on the shelf, and took up space for no reason. So, we were looking for something to make a sort of pedestal for a planter that was simple and free (other than supplies that we already had). My mom thought to put books underneath, but not nice books that could get ruined. She found the old medical books and remembered that everything looks better with a coat of paint. So that's what we did.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

We bought some couches from a resale shop. They looked good and the upholstery matched our other couches, but the color of the wood work was lighter than the other furniture in the living room. They actually came with palm tree pillows so we re-did those with varying shades of brown fabric from JoAnn's Fabrics. A year later we finally decided to do something about the wood. It does take a lot of time(about a week from start to finish) but it was well worth the time and effort.